Tag Archives: Middle East

Obama’s Israel Crisis

March 19, 2010 – 3:44 pm

In the end, Obama will likely have to face the fact (or suffer the consequences of refusing to face it) that the Israeli-Arab conflict is impervious to Israeli concessions. There is a fairly good reason for this, which is usually lost in the firestorm of pontification that greats anything and everything to do with Israel. It is simply this: the Israeli-Arab conflict was begun by the Arabs, and it can only be ended by the Arabs.

By Benjamin Kerstein | Posted in Blogs, Features, Hegemon | Also tagged , , , , , , | Comments

What The Obama Administration Doesn’t Understand About The Middle East

March 18, 2010 – 6:39 am

Let’s turn over the mike to Yossi Klein Halevi:

Astonishingly, Obama is repeating the key tactical mistake of his failed efforts to restart Middle East peace talks over the last year. Though Obama’s insistence on a settlement freeze to help restart negotiations was legitimate, he went a step too far by including building in East Jerusalem. Every Israeli government over the last four decades has built in the Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem; no government, let alone one headed by the Likud, could possibly agree to a freeze there. Obama made resumption of negotiations hostage to a demand that could not be met. The result was that Palestinian leaders were forced to adjust their demands accordingly.

By Pejman Yousefzadeh | Posted in Chequer-Board | Also tagged , , , , , , , | Comments

Israeli Politics Made Simple

March 17, 2010 – 6:42 am

If Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backs off of building new housing developments in East Jerusalem, his government will fall.

Because the Prime Minister doesn’t want to have his government fall, he won’t back off in response to the Obama Administration’s public denigration efforts.

If the Obama Administration wants to convince the Prime Minister to back off, they will have to use private diplomacy, and throw a sweetener into the deal in order to make it easier for the Prime Minister’s government to survive.

Eric Cantor seems to know this, which is why his advice to the White House to back off in public ought to be listened to. Whether it actually will be listened to is an open question; as the Obama Administration has made clear in a little over a year in office, its actual ability to do foreign policy right is not nearly as great as was advertised during the 2008 Presidential campaign.

By Pejman Yousefzadeh | Posted in Chequer-Board | Also tagged , , , , , , , | Comments

The Ongoing Andrew Sullivan Saga

February 12, 2010 – 2:21 am

It occurs to me that given his reply to Leon Wieseltier, in which Andrew Sullivan accused Wieseltier of not coming out and saying definitively whether he believes that Sullivan is an anti-Semite, a similar critique may be made of me, given that I passed over the question myself, and instead posed questions to Sullivan that weren’t quite answered (whether that is because Sullivan did not see my post, or did see the post and decided not to answer the questions, I cannot say).

By Pejman Yousefzadeh | Posted in Blogs, Chequer-Board | Also tagged , , , , , , , | Comments

Something Much More Unresponsive

February 10, 2010 – 10:47 pm

Speaking of Andrew Sullivan, he has posted a long reply to Leon Wieseltier, whose article I linked to.

By Pejman Yousefzadeh | Posted in Blogs, Chequer-Board | Also tagged , , , , , , , | Comments

Andrew Sullivan’s Got Some ‘Splainin’ To Do

February 9, 2010 – 6:09 pm

Accusations of anti-Semitism are serious things, so I am not going to make them. But after reading this piece by Leon Wieseltier on Andrew Sullivan, I have some questions which I would love to see the Inspector Javert of Trig Palin’s matrilineal line answer.

By Pejman Yousefzadeh | Posted in Blogs, Chequer-Board | Also tagged , , , , , , , | Comments

Christopher Hitchens Gives ‘Em Both Barrels

January 8, 2010 – 6:36 am

Arch anti-jihadist Christopher Hitchens now has two must-reads out there in cyberspace.

By Benjamin Kerstein | Posted in Blogs, Hegemon | Also tagged , , , , , , , | Comments

The Eternal Question

January 7, 2010 – 1:42 am

Why does Andrew Sullivan still have a job with the Atlantic?

By Pejman Yousefzadeh | Posted in Blogs, Chequer-Board | Also tagged , , , , | Comments

Dispatch From Israel: 2010, Maybe

December 31, 2009 – 9:17 am

Predicting the future in this part of the world is a fool’s game, but there have always been more than enough of us willing to play it, and to a certain extent we don’t have any choice in the matter. Indeed, the only thing that it is truly safe to say about the Middle East in 2010 is that it will probably be the same as it has always been: Locked into an unstable but workable status quo that could be blown apart at any minute by essentially unpredictable forces.

By Benjamin Kerstein | Posted in Features, News | Also tagged , , , | Comments

Dispatch From Israel: 2009 Through the Israeli Lens

December 24, 2009 – 7:22 am

Despite the ticking time bombs in Gaza and Iran, however, the general state of things over the past year was one of stalemate. If there was any light at the end of any tunnel to be glimpsed in the Middle East of 2009, it was, ironically, in Iran, where the first signs of serious discontent and resistance to Islamic totalitarianism have finally appeared. Given that, in the end, the dysfunctions of the Middle East can only be solved by the Middle East, this was one development—thought still nascent and fragile—for which all involved can be grateful.

By Benjamin Kerstein | Posted in Features, News | Also tagged , , , , , , | Comments

Dispatch From Israel: Obama and Netanyahu

November 23, 2009 – 12:29 am

The current impasse between Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu is less about practical politics or diplomacy and much more about two competing and incompatible messianic visions — both of which, unfortunately, are doomed to failure.

By Benjamin Kerstein | Posted in Features, Politics | Also tagged , , , , , | Comments

Is Joe Klein Nuts?

November 11, 2009 – 2:20 am

One is inclined to give poor Joe Klein the benefit of the doubt, and conclude that he suffers from another common liberal affliction: the need to engage in moralistic exhortations on subjects about which he knows absolutely nothing. Throw in a heady dose of wishful thinking, and even the most pedigreed establishment mind would be reduced by this to the kind of slathering, bug-eyed hysteria to which Klein appears unfortunately prone.

By Benjamin Kerstein | Posted in Features, Politics | Also tagged , , , | Comments
- March 21, 2010 -

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